#3.32
TDBB: Golem Toph 3.32
The trio reached the boundary of the Rot panting, Harley more than the others. She had been acting as a human draft horse, her shoulders bearing the dead, leaden weight of her companions.
It was an ugly, shuffling trot that took everything her athletic frame had to offer. Ivy’s arms were draped limply over Harley’s neck, her breath coming in shallow, dry puffs. Toph was hitched over Harley's hip, her feet dragging through the mud like two anchors made of iron ore.
The air changed in one step. The mud shifting from black and greasy into a single wild fern that brushed against Harley’s knee.
The moment that single plant made contact with Ivy’s skin, a violent, full-body tremor rippled through the botanist. Ivy’s fingers convulsed, her eyes snapping wide open. A heavy, ragged breath tore into her lungs.
"Oh," Ivy choked out, her voice cracking. "Oh... god."
Before Harley could even process the sudden movement, the earth beneath them seemed to rise to meet Toph’s feet. The corpse-grey hue that had stained the earthbender’s skin since the bog began to peel away, replaced by a rush of hot, angry blood that flooded back into her cheeks.
Toph exploded.
Her arms snapped out, her bare palms slamming into the uncorrupted soil as she dropped from Harley’s side.
"Out! Out! Get it out!" Toph roared, her face contorting into pure fury as she began frantically scraping at her own face.
Her fingers dug into her cheeks, tearing away the remaining patches of pale fungi and grey rot that had dried onto her skin.
Ivy collapsed flat onto her back against a patch of thick, green moss. She spread her arms wide, her fingers digging deep into the roots of a nearby hickory tree. The forest around them seemed to lean in. The leaves overhead rustled, and the pale, winter-cloud white of Ivy’s skin dissolved, the rich, vibrant olive tone rushing back into her flesh.
"I'm feeling alive," Ivy wheezed, her eyes staring blankly at the canopy as the ambient life force of the healthy woods poured back into her veins through the hickory’s roots. "Just... breathe."
Harley, meanwhile, simply let herself drop right between them, landing hard on her rear as she let out a long, theatrical groan. Her head fell back, her pigtails flopping into the dirt. Interestingly, while the other two had gone through a dramatic, color-changing resurrection, Harley looked pretty much exactly the same.
"Well," Harley panted, wiping a streak of black bog-sludge from her forehead. "If it helps, girls, I think the whole 'undead chic' look was totally working for us. Very vintage. Very 'eighties music video.' But boy, am I glad to have my regular old lungs back. "
Ivy turned her head slowly, her green eyes fixing on Harley through the dim starlight.
"Harls," Ivy said, her voice dropping into a quiet, steady register. She reached across the moss, her fingers catching the edge of Harley’s tattered sleeve. "You did it. You actually got us out. If you hadn't broken that connection... if you hadn't stayed awake..."
"Eh, don't sweat it, Red," Harley beamed, her chest swelling as she took in the praise.
She leaned back on her elbows, a smug, self-satisfied grin breaking across her face. "You know me -- can't stay tied down for long! A good escape act is all about the dramatic timing. If you don't give 'em a little scare first, the audience doesn't clap as loud when you pull the rabbit out of the hat!"
A few feet away, Toph had finally stopped scraping the mold from her collarbone. She sat cross-legged in the dirt, her head tilted slightly as her bare feet took their first real reading of the local geology. The granite below was deep, solid, and beautifully loud. The roots of the trees were supple and moving.
She let out a low grunt, her sightless white eyes turning toward the sound of Harley's giggling.
"Yeah, well," Toph muttered, crossing her arms over her chest and looking distinctly defensive. "I guess you're slightly more useful than just being the circus act."
She paused, her jaw working as her curiosity got the better of her. "How did you even do that anyway? How did you wiggle out of a giant zombie without any bending?"
"Oh, it’s all in the shoulders!" Harley gasped, her eyes lighting up as she scrambled into a sitting position, gesturing wildly with her hands. "I dislocated the left one, turned my ribs sideways, and slid right through his meat like it was butter."
"And then, once my arm was free," she continued. "It was just a simple matter of using his suit collar for leverage and pulling my legs up behind my ears! Standard circus stuff, really."
Toph stared at her for a long, silent moment. A slow, genuine grin began to creep across the earthbender’s face. "I didn't think you had that kind of grit in you, Circus. I want to see more of your tricks!"
Then, the grin vanished, replaced by a dark, sudden scowl as she looked back toward the tree line they had just fled. "Urgh! that giant pile of garbage broke our stage. We should punish him for destroying the golem."
Ivy let out a dry, knowing chuckle from her spot on the moss, though she didn't try to sit up yet. "Feel free to match back into that clearing to flatten him."
Toph’s shoulders went rigid. Her fists clamped shut against her knees, her face flushing a deep crimson. "I told you we shouldn't have fought on an empty stomach. That's where the real problem was."
"Mm-hmm," Ivy murmured, a small, triumphant smile playing on her lips. "Sure thing."
"Don't mock me." Toph growled.
"I'm not," Ivy chuckled.
"I don't think Grundy was trying to be a bad host," Harley interrupted. "Deep down, he didn't want to destroy Harley's van."
"He’s always been misunderstood," her voice dropped into a surprisingly soft, reflective tone as she looked back toward the dark woods. "He’s like a big, lonely toddler who doesn't know his own strength, and just wants to make some friends."
Harley’s face contorted into a grimace of pure disgust as she recalled the central clearing. "But did he really have to use that big, nasty, stinky black soup-pot? Seriously, that thing was totally groody."
"The cauldron wasn't his," Ivy said, her expression darkening as she finally pulled herself up into a sitting position, her back resting against the hickory trunk. "It's a direct artifact from the Rot. The Parliament of the Grey is using him for another one of their malicious, ambitious plays, and Grundy thinks he's operating on his own logic."
Toph twisted her face, "I'm hating Parliaments more and more."
"Grundy thinks the Parliament is helping him achieve his goal," Ivy mused. "He thinks they're giving him the power to build his own kingdom of zombies."
Harley’s shoulders drooped, her lower lip turning out in a genuine pout. "Oh... poor Grundy. All the big lug wants is to make some buddies to hang out with on Sundays. That’s just sad. Maybe we should go back and help him clean out his soup-pot properly?"
"The guy tried to rot us," Toph reminded. "I'm only going back to settle the score."
"Good luck with that," Ivy said grimly. "Grundy is technically immortal. He always comes back to life no matter what you do."
"I used to have his head once," Harley said, reminiscing. "He's such a good listener when he's not plotting an apocalypse."
"We need to stop him before he spreads the rot any further and destroys the Green," Ivy said. "But we can't do it by ourselves. Not without help."
"Not that we need it," Toph stated. "But who's going to help us? The avatar?"
"I guess you can call it that," Ivy replied, wiping the smirk off Toph's face. "The Swamp Thing is an avatar of the Green."
Toph's face drained into a hollow expression, "Please don't say the swamp thing is a--" She cut herself off, her sightless white eyes widening in horror. "A muscle-brained, short-tempered teenager who spends half her time whining about her feelings and the other half crying because she can't touch her shiny, glowing spirit-state?"
Ivy blinked, entirely thrown off by the sudden, incredibly detailed mental breakdown. "That is... oddly specific."
Harley, looking equally bewildered, leaned past Toph and violently tugged on the sleeve of Ivy's green jacket. She cupped a hand over her mouth, dropping her voice to a loud, theatrical whisper. "Psst! Red! Is... is that her new description of me? My feelings are a delicate ecosystem, and I look very dull when I'm sad."
"I'm feeling old again already," Toph groaned.
Ivy stared at the earthbender, utterly baffled, before shaking her head to clear the weirdness out of the air. "I don't know who you're talking about, Toph, but it's definitely not the Swamp Thing. The Guardian of the Green holds much more class than you've described."
"Whatever," Toph muttered, already pushing herself up off the mossy ground. She dusted the dirt off her knees with a sharp, aggressive slap, her stomach letting out a low, predatory rumble right on cue. "Just thinking about avatars is making me more hungry. At least let's find something to eat first."
Without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel and started walking briskly down the uncorrupted forest path, her bare feet slamming firmly into the dirt as she took the lead.
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